Best Bay Area hikes with kids

Since the beginning of the year, we’ve been going on a lot of hikes. Not that we didn’t before, but we’ve upped our game because we’ve found that our weekends just seem a whole lot more fun if we go exploring.

Before our daughter came along, Dana and I used to hike pretty much all the time. Free moments were spent exploring Land’s End. We had time to go to the Marin Headlands. If I thought of the best moments from all our pre-child vacations together, they always had something to do with a hike and a simple picnic and a vista stretching into eternity. (Of course, kinky travel hotel sex comes to mind, too, but our parents read this blog, so I’ll leave off any mention of handcuffs and European blow up dolls shaped like Alf. Oh please, as if you never.)

Hiking is, I think, an underrated family activity. It’s free, you can do it practically anywhere, and you’re unplugged from the modern-day technology storm, so you can spend some quality time with the ones you love. Plus, when you go with kids, you discover a whole lot more. I tend to become focused on reaching the top of a hill or finishing a long loop, whereas my daughter literally stops to smell the flowers or kick over a few rocks to look for bugs. It is much more enjoyable to slow down.

Over the past year, we’ve trampled through practically every wild spot San Francisco has to offer and have ventured south to San Bruno Mountain and the marshes near Redwood City. We took Emmeline to Rockville Park in Fairfield — the park Dana and I both explored endlessly as children. We’ve stopped in redwood groves and trudged through salt marshes.

One of our favorite recent hikes involved scrambling around Strawberry Hill in Golden Gate Park. It’s the island in the middle of Stow Lake — you can read about our adventure here and see some photos. For us, it’s a new hike, and I’ve been recommending it to people as a fun alternative to Children’s Playground or museum activities, if visiting San Francisco with kids. It’s easy to find, it’s easy for kids and it’s just plain fun to feel “lost” in the middle of a big city.